Believe this if you want to. Supposedly, Prince laid his strong pimp hand on walking Petri dish Paris Hilton over the weekend. According to one source, the Purple One was performing at Club 3121 in Las Vegas when he spotted the “Stars Are Blind” chanteuse in the audience and invited her to join him onstage for a duet. Paris seemed delighted until Prince handed her a microphone and then turned to the audience to snap, “Now let’s see if she can really sing,” at which point Paris stormed off the stage, humiliated. Two songs later she was out of the building.

Now, keep in mind that this story comes from a single source. It’s been denied by the hard-working army of Paris Hilton publicists, and the Prince camp has offered no comment. But it’s spreading like wildfire through the intertubes because it fills a profound, inchoate yearning. I’m speaking of the desire felt by every man, woman, and child on the planet to see Paris publicly smacked down like the malicious, untalented, dumb-as-a-sack-of-hammers attention whore she is. House of Wax helped a little, but we all knew the impalement scene wasn’t real. So we continue to clutch at straws like this alleged Prince smackdown, hoping they might be true. Meanwhile, the world is waiting.